Jim Scherer will tell you that the Mazda dealership he runs at 2300 West Pioneer Parkway in Peoria was a perfect fit for a building established for the Saturn dealership that he operated at the same site until 2009.

Scherer will celebrate four years as a Mazda dealer in Peoria this October and feels he’s very lucky to be involved with a small auto brand that has found success in the market.

“Mazda Motors has been on a roller coaster ride that has seen it go from a financial state of perennial losses to one of record profits,” noted Joseph Choi on the website of the National Automobile Dealers Association.

“With its solid track record as a technological innovator and a little bit of good fortune, however, the automaker is now headed in a positive direction and has others looking to it for its engineering and manufacturing prowess,” wrote Choi.

Scherer can recall another car company that was headed in a positive direction. “I was turned on by Saturn,” he said, remembering how the brand was first depicted as “a different kind of car company.”

The Saturn was an attempt by GM to launch a separate brand along the lines of what Toyota did with Lexus (that went on sale a year before Saturn’s arrival in 1990).

While Lexus was established as a luxury model, Saturn was supposed to be GM’s answer in the fuel-efficient/small car category that Japanese companies specialized in.

Between 1970 and 1985, import cars sold in the United States went from 13 percent to 24 percent, according to Newsweek, adding that “fledgling Japanese auto plants in America were building top-quality products with just half the workforce that GM factories needed.”

“Saturn was an attempt by our industry to fix some of the processes,” said Scherer.

Saturn’s whole new approach included a separate assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tenn. with an innovative union contract that stressed teamwork. The company’s no-dickering, customer-first marketing policy engendered such loyalty that 40,000 Saturn owners and their families traveled to Spring Hill for the first Saturn Homecoming in June 1994.

But 20 years after that homecoming, it still bothers Scherer the way things ended up.

It was in 2009 with General Motors facing the unthinkable — having to declare bankruptcy — when GM announced plans to “shed” the Saturn brand along with Saab and Hummer.

But Saturn didn’t go down quietly — or without hope. “They told us (Saturn dealers) that they could sell it,” said Scherer.

Page 2 of 2 - The vaunted Penske Automotive Group was interested — actually more than interested but ready to go. “I remember talking with a GM attorney in 2009 who said the deal was all but done — that they’d even ordered Penske-Saturn pens, hats and all the rest,” said Scherer.

But the deal fell through. Nissan-Renault, the firm that Penske had lined up to manufacture the cars, backed out at the last minute of a government deadline (established as terms of the bankruptcy).

But why was Saturn, that sold more cars than GM’s Buick, singled out for elimination in the first place, wonders Scherer?

The auto dealer felt it came down to lawsuits. Jotting down the number of dealerships on paper, he points to 400 Saturn dealerships across the country compared to 1,800 Buick dealers.

“There would be less lawsuits with (the elimination of) Saturn,” he said, referring to suits filed by ousted dealers, demanding restitution from GM.

The whole 20-year Saturn story, of course, could be portrayed as a view of the nation’s auto industry in microcosm.

It’s all there: the singular idea, the marketing initiative, the union-management collaboration, the resulting success (Saturn dealers couldn’t keep cars in stock in the mid-90s, recalled Scherer) and then the erosion of that idea.

GM didn’t maintain the brand with style changes, lost the unique union contract and eventually pulled production from Spring Hill. There were no more homecomings. In the end, the Saturn was just another GM brand that fell by the wayside.

It bothers Scherer that people might only recall Saturn’s demise and not celebrate the success the company enjoyed in the 1990s. And there’s always what might have been.

“We had the dealer network — a majority of your Saturn dealers held on until the end. Saturn could have competed in the present car environment,” he said.

But looking at the success of models in that environment like the Mazda 3 and Mazda 6 (both named to Car and Driver’s list of top 10 cars for 2014), Scherer has a new goal. “I just want to be the best Mazda dealer I can be,” he said.